[MarzM]

Ok so here it is the new 40k points system for both Fantasy and 40k!

http://warhammerworld.typepad.com/warhammer_world_news/2007/03/grand_tournamen.html#more

Good idea? Discuss!

MarzM :mrgreen:

 

[jigplums]

Looks good to me, the points for massacre/major victory are only going to seperate people with similar wins, top 40 is going to make it tougher to cut the mustard and the best army/sportsmanship places promote other aspects of the hobby. Thumbs up so far. lets see how it works this year.

 

[MarzM]

Well i don't care about winning GT. The only thing i've ever wanted to win was Best Army! Perhaps this will give me the impetus to actually paint an army to the standard everybody expects me too!


MarzM :mrgreen:

 

[Prophaniti]

As posted on TWF, the best painted spots mean I'm going to try and get my daemonhunters painted for the heats this year.

*Thumbs up* (With some reservations, but hey, every scoring system has its problems.)

 

[Jezlad]

Looks good to me. I've never finished top 40 so this might be a good time to dig out the "dummies guide to miniature painting"!

How do they determine who the good sports are?

 

[jigplums]

*Thumbs up* (With some reservations, but hey, every scoring system has its problems.)

so what are your reservations so far?

 

[Prophaniti]

I think with a lot of people auto qualify is a bit much for best painted nominee as it entirely bypasses the gaming aspect of the event. A hefty bonus would be better. (If it stays in I'm still going for the painting nomination though)

Best sporting is a bit nebulous at this stage too.

The gaming scoring is pretty good too, so a minor buff to make it 32-1, 31-2, 30-3, 10-10 with zero for conceding would make it great.

 

[Exodite]

I have to admit that I like the new scoring system; however, I would agree with Prophaniti that the system would be slightly better if it was 32-1, 31-2, 30-3, 10-10.

My dislikes for the system are the auto-qualification for up to 6 best army nominees and up to 3 best sportsmen from each heat. I think that for best painted you should receive a bonus for your efforts, but as the GT is a tournament based on the 40k game, your ability to play the game should be the main contributor to if you qualify or not.

For sportsmanship I believe that while the award is a great idea, it should have no bearing at all on your overall standing.

 

[jigplums]

i must admit i thought the same at first, but painting lovely armies is also a very important aspect of the army and it should mean we have at least 18 lovely armies at the finals. This will hopefully mean that more people will put the extra effort into painting there armies rather than going with a half arsed minimum effort, bought 2 weeks before the qualifier powerlist.

Part of the reason i love the gts so much is that it gives me a chance to play against nicely painted armies ive never seen before. Hopefully this will encourage more of that.

 

[anathema]

This will hopefully mean that more people will put the extra effort into painting there armies rather than going with a half arsed minimum effort

Nah, it will likely make no difference to the majority. I know I certainly have no incentive to put any more effort in. I'll never get a nomination because I'm not a good enough painter, so I'm not going to put any more effort in than my own personal pride requires (not very much!)

 

[MarzM]

I wonder however! How do they pick the best army qualifers? Coz as much as it has a lot of convertions, Owen Reese get picked every time and his painting isn't all that good! It's just that he gets staff discount so can afford all the bitz and we can't/wont pay for them!

MarzM :mrgreen:

 

[tau air caste]

The new System isn't all that diff from the 3/1/0 system just bonus for big wins, so he went back on all he said at the GT finals where he said about the rule book and the 20/10/0 but never mind, As for 10 places for painting and sportsmanship... I don't like this! the judges pick the armies and some are really nice but I often see 1/2 armies that the painting isn't that great and I see fantastic armies not get picked so I personally don't like this And as for sportsman how will this be decided? will we be voting for sportsmanship (as the judge wont have a clue otherwise) last year at the heat or final one guy had an illegal army list... One person spotted it and it was a cause of BUSTED the "BUSTED" player had to tell the judges (tell or be told on) and they gave him best sportsman for this (he knew full well too what he was doing) so if we vote for the sportsmanship the thumbs up but not if the judges do.

 

[jigplums]

yeah i think so many places reserved for painting and wild cards is a bit much. personaly i think a bonus of points equivilent to a draw for nomination would be about right, therefore they would qualify over someone else on the same generalship points

 

[Beaky]

The GT's have always been about three elements of gaming.
1. the gaming itself.
2. the painting of the armies.
3. the sporting behaviour of the players.
In the last year or so we have lost some of these elements and are in the process of redressing that balance.

For the points scoring system I have not gone back on what I had said previously. The first goal of a scoring system is to ensure that the person who wins the most games wins the tournament. The second goal is to recognise the level of victory as shown in the rulebook. The 20-0 system didn't achieve the first but managed the second. This altered system achieves both on paper, we still have to see how it works in practice.

Jigplums point about getting well painted armies to the finals is exactly right, we all want to see fantastic armies at the final, with that in mind rewarding painting in this way seems the most appropriate because there are players out there who love to game but their forte is painting. Does that make them any less of a hobbyist?

Finally, sportsmanship. We expect all players in our tournaments to behave as good sports, if they didn't the events would never run effectively. For that you should all be commended. If anyone doesn't behave in this way, the referees are now empowered to take action that could potentially lead to a players removal from a tournament. Sometimes, there are people out there who do something exceptional that makes everyone in the events team stand up and take notice (and I don't mean funny outfits). When this happens we feel they deserve some recognition for that attitude and because we want to encourage good sportsmanship we offer them a place at the final.

I'm glad that our events are driving conversation, I hope that you guys can understand our reasons for our approach to scoring, qualification etc. and I hope you'll all try to qualify for the finals this year.

Good Luck

Brian

 

[Glen Roeder's love child]

Thanks Brian, some insight always helps us all to understand change.

I entirely agree with the ethos of allocating places for the final based on painting and outstanding sportsmanship.

I also agree with the 30,10,1 scoring system. If you are on the top tables playing equally good players the old 20-0 results should in theory be few and far between, I feel the old system penalised players for being on the top tables against the top players.

I am keen to hear you thoughts on a couple of points though about the new format:

To me the biggest issue with the current qualification process is that the there are 2 or 3 dominant armies out there arguably Iron Warriors, Blood Angels and there is an element of if you can't beat them join them. With qualification becoming tougher in terms of tournament placings do you have any plans to look at any sort of restrictions or comp score?

Secondly, some of the painting standards are not great. I realise that not everyone is a talented painter however often you can clearly see a distinct lack of effort in many cases where the minimum criteria is either not or barely met. Are you planning to raise the minimum standards? I have played against a few copy and paste uber lists where the painting was the absolute minium required, yet these armies seem to frequent the upper reaches of the final standings.

Finally, on more than one occasion me and my mates have scratched our heads at some of the nominations for best painted army. At this year final there was certainly one well below average nomination. I tend to give the judges the benefit of the doubt and put this down to administration of the numbers, but I have seen a few shockers. Do you plan to tighten up in this area now that there is so much as stake and are you planning to award places to all or some of the nominations.

No sure if there are solutions to all of these, just keen to hear your thoughts.

 

[anathema]

Thanks for giving us some insight into the reasons for the new rules Brian.
I understand and appreciate what you're trying to do and why, I just personally disagree with reducing the gaming qualification slots. However, this doesn't mean I won't be going or that I won't enjoy the GT, just my opinion. From what I gather there's plenty out there which agree with you, so fair enough and hopefully I'll be proved wrong.

If anyone doesn't behave in this way, the referees are now empowered to take action that could potentially lead to a players removal from a tournament. Sometimes, there are people out there who do something exceptional that makes everyone in the events team stand up and take notice (and I don't mean funny outfits). When this happens we feel they deserve some recognition for that attitude and because we want to encourage good sportsmanship we offer them a place at the final.

Glad to hear about the sanctions for bad sportsmanship and I hope it won't be needed. I'm pretty sure most gamers consider good sportsmanship a minimum requirement for a good game so good to see it will be punished if lacking.

 

[Beaky]

Good Questions, let's see what I can do.

As I work for GW I am duty bound to design and run our GT using the Standard rules as a foundation. With this in mind, we don't plan to include anything to reflect composition or direct restrictions to army lists in the way your question suggests. The game as a whole benefits from this because we can see how these armies are playing out and it does direct games developers to consider issues arising from the density of particular armies at the GT. I hope that makes sense.

We are aware of the, to be honest, embarrassing armies that achieved (at least on paper) the minimum requirements for painting last year. The referees are mopre equipped to deal with this in 2007-8 and will be encouraged (by me) to remove miniatures that don't meet our standards. In addition, we intend to clarify our standards in the House Rules document for this years GT. In essence we are using the standards that were once defined for painting scores (two years ago).

Best Painted Armies are picked by a small team during the first lunch break. We are considering whether to have a 'second cut' if you will, where we get all the nominations together and decide if they should go through to the final vote. Add to that a clearer steer (from me) to the judges on what they are looking for should reduce the issues you mentioned.

I hope that helps

Brian

 

[jigplums]

One thing i would like to see revisited would be a players vote for most sporting. Basically where at the end of game 6 the player can vote for one of their opps to be most sporting. With a comments section for why your voting for them. This could then be used as a "guide" for most sporting choices

 

[dakari-mane]

As I work for GW I am duty bound to design and run our GT using the Standard rules as a foundation. With this in mind, we don't plan to include anything to reflect composition or direct restrictions to army lists in the way your question suggests. The game as a whole benefits from this because we can see how these armies are playing out and it does direct games developers to consider issues arising from the density of particular armies at the GT. I hope that makes sense.

My only issue with this is that the current GT system only reflects two of the three available mission levels. Thus any comparison between armies is inherently flawed as it lacks Alpha level missions.

 

[jigplums]

A very good point, i disagree with the current thread for games development that looks at what does well at tournaments and adjusts things accordingly, but doing so without alpha even in the mix means that there are a very broad portion of things being used that would be much more limited in a system that supported all 3 mission levels. However i'm not a massive fan of alpha missions anyway as i think they make for a very one dimensional game and can be won or lost by army list alone, without giving the oppertunity for you to "out play" your weaknesses. For example if you army has very little real chance of getting the majority into the opp's deployment, yet they have lots of fast moving stuff then maybe you can do enough damage to win, even with your opps landspeeders zipping over the heads of your infantry guard.